


friday, i'm in love

by storytellingape



Category: About Time (2013 Curtis), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), This Is Where I Leave You (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, First Meetings, Kylux Adjacent Ship, M/M, Meet-Cute, They have sex a lot in this fic, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 16:01:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13573992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storytellingape/pseuds/storytellingape
Summary: Tim is instantly reminded of something his father had said to him once, something about how making one choice over another is never the end of the story. Or: Tim meets Phil and his life is changed forever.





	friday, i'm in love

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think a tag for this pairing even exists but I am stubborn when taken with an idea. And this is it! If you haven't seen About Time, this is the [trailer of the movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7A810duHvw) and will tell you all about the movie itself (really) and Tim Lake, Domhnall Gleeson's character. Tim can travel back in time (it's unclear how far back?) and it's a gift all men in his family possess. All he needs to do is go somewhere dark and clench his fists and think about a particular time he'd like to return to etc etc. 
> 
> Now [this is Phillip Altman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5eBmau4IyQ) from This is Where I Leave You. I swear I won't mind if you don't read the fic, just watch this link. He's amazing. He's a lovable asshole.
> 
> Minor characters mentioned: [Harry is played by Tom Hollander in About Time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoZTVHX8jf0), a playwright/friend of Tim's dad whom he ends up living with in the interim while he's lawyering about in London. Rory, also a lawyer, is a friend from work. 
> 
> Also this fic was written entirely while listening to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoTWQyxZyuk) song. This fic contains a reference to the film Before Sunrise. The song they listen to is [Kath Bloom's Come Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDhmnoBVYlQ). Because I am an utter schmoop. 
> 
> This is the longest a/n in the history of mankind but I just wanted to say I wanted to align the mood of the fic with the movie? Hope it works. Sorry Richard Curtis.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Friday night finds Tim and Rory at their usual haunt: a pub just right across the office where the barkeep has the most generous pour. Well, most of the time. Tim keeps his glass firmly on the table, well on his way to his second pint. Rory had dragged him here so they could meet girls, as if several attempts in the last year had produced any kind of success. 

Tim hates these kinds of nights, though usually he finds he doesn’t really mind after he’s loose-limbed from one too many tequila shots, relaxed enough not to worry about his appearance or whether or not he’s starting to seem desperate. This constant search for romance is, quite frankly, exhausting, and he’s starting to cotton on to the fact that London is a terrible place to meet people. Everyone’s too busy to date. At least, the people that interest Tim, anyway.

Tonight though, he thinks, maybe he’ll be lucky, and he rides that same delusion that’s brought him to the same pub in the last ten months and joins the small herd of people trickling in from work.

Tim likes this pub because it’s dim and cosy, and because the food isn’t always shit. It’s never too loud inside; the television mounted in the corner of the bar is turned on at a respectable volume, and conversation is always a pleasant wash of white noise in the background; the bathrooms and everything else that matters are clean enough. 

He’s launching a peanut shell at Rory when the door opens and a guy walks in wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses. Tim looks up just as the guy is glancing around the place, and when their eyes meet he feels a jolt of _something_ cut sharply through the haze of alcohol fogging his mind. It’s enough to make him stop and take in the guy’s appearance: the dark wavy hair, the big nose, the long-striding gait. Then the fact that the guy is actually wearing sunglasses _indoors_ sinks in though the moment dies an abrupt death after Rory overtakes Tim’s vision to ask him whether wants another refill, waving his fingers in his face.

“I’ll get it,” Tim announces, blinking for the first time. “Let me.” He walks over to the bar in a sort of daze, elbowing his way past the crush of people milling about the counter. The guy is there too, ordering a drink. He seems to be alone. Tim glances up only when he’s certain the guy is watching him. 

“Nice tie,” the guy says, a smile dimpling his cheek when Tim finally deigns to meet his gaze. He’s American because — of course he is. And he seems to have all the symptoms of being a complete knobhead starting from the sunglasses folded into the collar of his henley, to the fact he looks like he works out a lot. Which only means he’s the kind of guy Tim will look at from afar but never approach on his own.

Tim touches his tie self-consciously, a gift from his sister, pink with a print of a piglet smoking a cigarette. He buttons up his jacket. “Thanks,” he says, awkwardly.Then he stands there waiting for his drink, fiddling with the ten pound note crumpled in his hand.

“I’m Phil,” the guy says, after his drink arrives first, appearing at his elbow where he’s leaning languorously on the spill ridge. Tim had expected something awful and lurid, but it’s just a Guinness, though if it had been anything else he would have wrinkled his nose and walked away. 

“Well?” Phil prompts when Tim, like an idiot, says nothing in response. “Now it’s your turn.”

“What?”

“What’s your name?”

“Right,” Tim says, shaking himself out of whatever weird funk is clouding his brain. He thrusts out a hand, realising he’s never had to introduce himself this way before without first handing someone his business card. “Tim Lake.”

Phil stares at his hand before shaking it. “Well, Tim Lake,” he takes a sip of his drink and then smiles again. “Do you have a table?”

 

*

Phil, as it turns out, is funny and clever, and everything Tim wishes he wasn’t. If there was a checklist of qualities Tim likes in a person, Phil ticks all of them from the way he tells a joke to how he won’t stop touching Tim’s elbow every now and then. The fact that he openly stares at Tim, in front of Rory no less, seems par for the course, and by the time they part ways and flag a separate taxi home, Tim is already anticipating the barrage of texts Rory will be sending him. He tells himself he’s fine, that he isn’t anxious at all even though he hasn’t had sex in nearly two years; he almost convinces himself of the fact until he’s halfway down the sidewalk and the ground tilts up to meet him. 

When he tries to put one foot in front of the other, he stumbles on his feet, free-falling into gravity if not for the pair of arms that catches him round the waist and hauls him upright. 

It’s Phil, of course; his hand is warm on Tim’s hip. Something about his eyes makes Phil want to close his and surrender to the heady feeling that’s starting to work its way up his chest from the bottom of his feet.

“I think my ploy to get you pliant enough to flirt with me has backfired immeasurably,” Phil says, righting Tim against the wall. Too many words, and Tim says just as much, so Phil says, “You’re shitfaced, Timmy, that’s what this is. It’s cute; you’re cute. I would kiss you right now but you probably won’t remember it in the morning.”

“ _What?_ ” Tim says. He shakes his head, and feels awful immediately, and has to grab hold of Phil’s jacket to feel any kind of relief. “No, no, no, no,” he moans, “Kiss me. I’m totally fine. I can take it. I’m totally—” He isn’t, as evidenced by the sudden lurching of his stomach and the fact he abruptly empties its contents all over Phil’s nice leather shoes.

Phil jumps out of the way but it’s too late — Tim gets puke all over him. It’s terrible. He’ll never be kissed like this. His mouth tastes like sick and he’s almost bowled over by another wave of nausea except he wills it to pass by hugging a nearby fire hydrant. Phil touches Tim’s hair in sympathy, keeping a firm grip on the back of his collar lest he face-plants onto the asphalt from the way he keeps listing forward and then rocking back on his heels.

“You’re pretty, you know, even when you have vomit all over your face,” Phil remarks. Then he rubs Tim’s back. 

They don’t have sex because Tim can barely stand on his own. Phil herds him up the stairs and into bed, helping him change out of his clothes and putting him to rights by dressing him in the most outrageous pair of paisley pyjamas he finds in the closet. 

Phil lingers in the doorway long enough for it to be the last thing Tim remembers before he falls asleep. In the morning, he finds a note taped on the bedside table next to a glass of tepid water he’s probably supposed to drink. The note reads, in the handwriting of a primary school student: _nice meeting you, tim. i’ll send u a bill for the drycleaning, phil xoxo._ But Phil doesn’t leave his number. 

Naturally, Tim does the only logical thing. He goes back in time as soon as he’s able. This time, he makes sure to not drink too much, though the end result is that he’s too jittery around Phil to respond to his flirting. He tries though, and laughs appropriately at all the right intervals. When Phil squeezes his knee under the table, Tim almost bolts but he keeps himself seated and doesn’t look away from his gaze. 

Later, when it’s last call, Phil drops Tim off at his place. The lights inside are all still off meaning Harry hasn’t come home yet, probably passed out on an acquaintance’s sofa. It’s the perfect set-up and _yet_ — Phil lingers on the sidewalk while Tim hovers uncertainly on the third step of the front stoop that brings him a head taller above Phil. 

“I had a really nice time,” Phil says, looking up at him but doing nothing to bridge the gap. He rubs a hand over his neck, bashful, his eyes bright under the ghostly glow of street lamps. “It was great…meeting you at the pub tonight.”

“Right,” says Tim after a pause. Then he finally finds his voice. “Do you want to come up?”

Phil doesn’t meet his eyes and keeps rubbing at his neck. His hair is in his face. For some reason, Tim is struck with the violent urge to shove it out of the way. 

“I would but, I have an early flight tomorrow,” Phil says. “My dad just died and I have to be at his funeral or my mom will kill me. I don’t think she’ll be in the mood to pay for two funerals.”

“You could’ve just said no.” The words are out before Tim can stop himself. Apparently, not only is he an idiot but he also possesses the uncanny knack to warp any amiable conversation by saying something mean or sarcastic in a mostly awkward attempt to salvage his own feelings. 

“What does that even mean?” Phil says. “You think I’m making this up?” 

“Well no,” Tim says. And then: “ _Obviously_ , I mean— you expect me believe something so bizarrely outlandish? A funeral? I mean, really?”

Tim can almost pinpoint the exact moment Phil’s face falls though his expression hardly wavers. It’s a skill, Tim thinks, whereas he crumples at the drop of a hat, and is prone to sudden downswings in mood.

“I really liked you, you know,”Phil says, eventually, sounding resigned. “I thought — never mind. It doesn’t matter now, I guess. Good night, Tim.” He zips up his jacket, then does an about face, leaving Tim with the sinking feeling that he’d fobbed everything up. Tim watches him go, telling himself it doesn’t matter, good riddance to him anyway, but then recalls the rest of the evening and is suddenly awash with regret: Phil pressing his hand to the small of Tim’s back while they stood on the sidewalk and waited for a taxi, Phil walking him up to his front door, their elbows bumping along the way. Phil laughing at all of Tim’s unfunny jokes, even the ones that he’d said already.

Tim had wanted to kiss Phil, there under the striped awning where he smoked two cigarettes in quick succession, even though he knew he was going to hate the stink of it. But now he will never be able to. 

By the time Tim realises his mistake, Phil has already turned the corner and is long gone. 

 

*

The third time,Tim is ten minutes late to the pub, misses Phil’s entrance entirely, and ends up drinking more than anticipated. He’s convinced he won’t ever meet Phil again, and attempts to shake himself out of his weird obsession by flirting with the first guy he meets at the counter, calling it a night when he starts to list on his feet and has the guy’s number in his front pocket. Rory has left after Tim has elected to be the world’s worst wingman by not scoping the place for girls and herding them back to their booth. He’s shit at that anyway; and his mind is perpetually in a cloud in search for Phil though a part of him doesn’t understand why he can’t let this one go. 

When he does bump into Phil, talking on the phone and smoking under the small awning outside, Tim has to grab hold of his forearm to keep himself from tripping on a crack on the sidewalk.Phil pockets his phone, scowling at him without recognition, blowing smoke rings into Tim’s eyes. “Hey asshole! Watch where you’re — hey, are you all right?”

Again with those eyes. It’s ridiculous but Tim wants to kiss him, even when his mind is sluggish from the alcohol and his body feels like it weights a ton. Phil, obviously, doesn’t know him. He won’t remember ever laughing at Tim’s jokes, or showing Tim a picture of his nephew on his phone, or running his hand through Tim’s hair that first time Tim got drunk and made a fool of himself in front of him, passing out in a pair of paisley pyjamas Phil had dressed him in himself. But he’s still the same person with the tall nose and beautiful laugh. He’s still, innocuously, the only one whose face Tim can’t seem to want to forget. 

“Hello,” Tim says. “I’m Tim.” Then he leans sideways and throws up.

Tim tells himself this is his last attempt as he steps into the pub to meet Rory for drinks. The scene is familiar: down to the programme playing quietly on the telly to the crush of people crowding the counter; he is of course wearing the same shirt, the same tie, the same one Phil had complimented the very first time they met. He orders a pint and waits, nervously jiggling his leg under the table. Time seems to move at a glacial pace as he waits for Phil to make an appearance, and he starts shredding paper napkins just to have something to quell the shaking of his hands. 

Just as he’s getting ready to get them refills, Phil shows up wearing his leather jacket. He’s exactly how he’s supposed to be down to the sunglasses and the hair and he meets Tim’s eyes at the door when he turns his head in his direction. 

Tim is instantly reminded of something his father had said to him once, something about how making one choice over another is never the end of the story. 

He walks up to the bar. “Hi,” he says, running his fingers down the length of his tie. He hopes Phil doesn’t notice the tremor in his hands. If he does, he makes no indication of it because he looks at Tim and smiles. 

“Hey,” he says. 

*

Tim tells him not to smoke on the short walk home, and Phil, he turns to look at him. They’re at an intersection, the light overhead changing from green to red to a mostly empty street. Eerie almost, with a sudden hush falling over them, except that Tim feels like he’s on the precipice of something waiting to happen. Or maybe he’s just imagining things, buoyed by the lightness of foot brought about by the alcohol. 

He starts walking backwards and Phil follows, hands inside the pockets of his battered leather jacket. 

“Why shouldn’t I smoke?” Phil asks, already smiling around his cigarette. He hasn’t lit it, so it sits bobbing in the corner of his mouth every time he speaks. 

“Why do you think?” Tim tells him. His heart starts pounding in his ears, his knees shaking. “I’m planning to kiss you,” he says. This is, of course, true. 

Phil looks taken aback, like he hadn’t expected this candor at all. But then his smile widens and he flicks his unsmoked cigarette onto the ground, and Tim remembers why he knew this was all going to be worth it, in the end. 

“All right,” Phil acquiesces, hands lifted amicably. “All right,” he repeats.

This time, they do it right, with Phil standing on the sidewalk as Tim leans over him from the third step of his front stoop. Phil’s hands are tight on Tim’s waist, resting under his jacket, warm where his fingers find the gap between his shirt and his trousers. He tips his face up so he can fit their mouths together, and without preamble, starts kissing Tim. It’s a little bit surreal, kissing Phil after all this runaround. 

His lips are chapped but faintly damp where he’s licked it and he kisses the way Tim has always dreamed of being kissed, slow and steady. He’s been kissed before, of course, loads of times, under bleachers, at a club, once in the non-fiction section of a bookshop, but not like this, nowhere near like this where his chest feels in danger of bursting through and his head feels too thick to think of anything else but kissing back. 

Sunspots dance in Tim’s vision when Phil starts pulling away. _Jesus_ , he thinks, and swallows around a sigh that’s threatening to overcome him. “Jesus,” he says. Phil laughs and takes a step forward, then another one that brings him a level below Tim on the stoop. He crowds him, up, up, up against the door, his breath warming the space between their mouths, his hands wending their way up Tim’s chest to brush faintly against his tie; then they touch his face, his long fingers spidering Tim’s lips. _Jesus_ , Tim thinks again. He cups Phil’s hand on his cheek. 

Phil’s hair is dark under the streetlamp, blue-black where the light hits it. He looks like he’s walked straight out of a dream, with his leather jacket and his soft mouth, his white-toothed smile. Then he leans in and says, apropos of nothing, “Sweetheart, I have a confession to make.”

“What?” says Tim. “What?”

“I like you.” Phil backs him farther against the door. Tim’s back hits the wood with a soft thud. “I like you a lot Tim Lake,” Phil continues. “Am I allowed to say that? Do you believe me?”

Tim closes his eyes. “Yes,” he says. “Yeah, of course.” 

When he’s managed to wrangle free from Phil’s tenuous grip, enough to check whether the lights in the living room are on, he smooths down his tie and settles his hand across the lapel of Phil’s jacket. “Wanna come up?”

Phil studies his face for a moment, before smiling and wrinkling Tim’s tie in a firmer grip. “Frankly,” he says. “I thought you’d never ask.” 

*

The state of Tim’s room is a pitiful at best. His room was the smallest in the house, second only to Harry’s walk-in closet: just a double mattress in the corner with a red duvet, a wardrobe, a rickety desk, an air conditioner rattling in the corner window. The windowsill groaned under the weight of accumulated rubbish: bonsai pots, law books, a stack of old CD’s that used to belong to Harry’s daughter, most of them of boybands his sister used to listen to. 

Part of the wall was still covered with posters from childhood. There was one of Britney Spears but Tim had binned it because he could never quite get a wank in with her eyes constantly watching his every move with judgment. 

He sits on the edge of the bed, watching Phil leaf through his meager record collection, most of them on loan from his father. Siouxsie and the Banshees, New Order, stuff his father wanted him to get into but couldn’t. Phil walks over to the record player, blowing dust off the lid before putting on a record. There’s a faint scratching noise before the familiar mellifluous voice of the Kath Bloom starts to fill the air. _No, I'm not impossible to touch, I have never wanted you so much, come here, come here…_

Tim thinks the song is rather apt.

“I like this one,” Phil decides, shrugging out of his jacket before crawling on top of Tim, pinning him on his back. But he doesn’t have to; Tim goes slack willingly, letting his arms fan out on either side of him. 

Phil stretches on top of him leisurely, kissing him like they have all the time in the world, rubbing his sides before tugging his shirt from his trousers. By the time Tim is down to his undershirt and boxers, he’s already close to coming, panting heavily and humping Phil’s thigh like an eager dog. It doesn’t take a lot to bring him off. Phil presses his hips forward and Tim comes with a strangled shout, shuddering against him before deflating on his back like a pathetic balloon. 

“Well,” Phil says, afterwards, rolling off of him and patting him good-naturedly on his stomach. “That was quick.”

“What?” 

But Phil is already sitting up, kicking off his shoes like he’s getting ready to sleep. “Hm?” he says, rubbing at his erection idly. He hasn’t come yet. Tim has barely touched him.

“Shit,” Tim hisses. “Damn. Just - wait here.” He staggers into the next room where he balls his hands into fists in the dark, willing the past hour away. When he stumbles back out, Phil is waiting by the bedroom window, peering out of the dirty blinds. He has a faint smile on his face which widens when Tim appears at the door, in the same clothes he’d worn earlier, his jacket in his hands. 

“Hey, you,” Phil says. “I was wondering where you’d gone.”

Tim all but jumps him, wrenching Phil’s leather jacket off his shoulders and pushing him down on the bed to a sitting position. He gets on his knees on the floor before Phil has the opportunity to pull his cock out, resting his hands on Phil’s spread thighs before glancing up at him uncertainly, heart pounding. He hasn’t done this before in a long time and it probably shows. 

“Wow — all right,” Phil breathes. “This is hot. Fuck, yeah.Tim, fuck. Baby.” He starts babbling, carding his fingers through Tim’s hair, tugging with just the right amount of pressure to send a prickling sensation dancing across Tim’s scalp. 

When Phil does free his dick, Tim’s jaw nearly unhinges from the sight of it: big, of course, but then he shouldn’t have expected anything less. Still, he tries his best to wrap his mouth around it, relaxing his throat, bobbing his head and gagging when he tries to swallow Phil down to the root, leaving smears of drool puddling Phil’s lap. He pulls back when his eyes start watering uncontrollably and flecks of tears run down his cheeks when he blinks once, twice, again and again.

“Hey,” Phil says, thumbing the corners of his eyes with both thumbs. “Just take it easy.”

Phil hauls him back to his feet, tugging him back on the bed, and then he’s undressing Tim down to nothing but his socks and fucking his hip. Tim wants Phil to fuck him, actually fuck him, but doesn’t know how to ask for it. But Phil seems to cotton on because he starts mouthing a path down Tim’s chest, down to his stomach then the inside of his thigh, nuzzling the hang of his balls before giving him a languorous lick that has his cock spitting precome.

“Wanna fuck you, Tim. Will you let me fuck you?” His voice, raspy like a smoker’s, sends a curl of arousal up Tim’s spine. 

Tim nods frantically, reaching over to the nightstand for the well-used tube of lube and pushing it into Phil’s hands. Phil laughs a little, but it isn’t mean or belittling. He leans forward to cup Tim’s face in his hands and kiss him, never mind the fact he’d just licked Tim’s arse and Tim just had Phil’s cock in his mouth, breaking away to gasp and still Tim’s wrist when he starts reaching for his own dick.

“Finger yourself,” Phil says. Tim obeys, though he drops the lube twice and he can’t seem to look Phil in the eye without turning red to his ears. He’s never — he makes the mistake of glancing up, his thighs spread awkwardly with two slick fingers up his arsehole, to find Phil watching intently, knelt by the foot of the bed and rubbing his cock idly in time with the motion of Tim’s wrist.

“Yeah, baby, come on,” Phil urges, “That’s it. Stretch yourself for daddy’s cock.”

“Please don’t say that,” Tim says, wincing.

“Huh?” Phil blinks. “What? Oh, you mean, ‘Daddy’?”

Tim nods, flushing. 

“Shit,” Phil says, but he’s laughing again, just a little, at himself. “Sorry.” He shakes his head. 

Phil fucks Tim on his hands and knees, and it’s uncomfortable enough that only Phil comes, grunting in Tim’s ear before slumping against him like dead weight. He lasts maybe five thrusts, and Tim just lies there afterwards, his cock trapped between his belly and the mattress, before Phil rolls over on the opposite side of the bed and flings the used condom across the room, missing the bin by half a foot. 

“Shit,” Phil groans. “Shit, shit, shit. God this is embarrassing.” He turns Tim over onto his back and cups his cheek. “I uh, I usually last longer than that, I promise. I just, I don’t know. You’re so hot. I wanted the fuck you the minute I laid my eyes on you. I guess I got carried away.”

Tim peers at him with one eye. Phil looks… almost embarrassed, which is something at odds with the rest of his demeanor because he wears confidence so well that it seems to deflect almost anything. 

“Hold that thought,” Tim says, and hobbles into the next room with a painful erection. What he comes back to is an earlier scene, before they’d stumbled their way into the dark, tripping on a flight stairs as they felt their way into Tim’s bedroom: Phil is rifling through Harry’s books and poking at the potted plants fringing the windowsill of his study. Running his hands across the framed posters crowding the wall, plays Harry had written, with a few of his favourites that he’d acted in himself in the early years.

“Hi,” Tim says, at the door. 

Phil turns, already with a soft smile on his face, and really, Tim shouldn’t feel so unmoored by it at all by but he is, even after he’s had him twice in the course of one night. 

“C’mere,” Phil says, seating himself on the edge of Harry’s desk, beckoning him with a finger.

Tim goes, and Phil pulls him between his spread knees and starts undressing him, unbuckling his belt and freeing Tim’s shirt over his head, pausing to graze his teeth in the shallow divot of his chest, thumbing his nipples until they harden under his thumbs and Tim whines, a needful sound. 

Tim’s body is soft in all the places Phil’s isn’t. They’re of different stock, and it shows even without Phil needing to take his shirt off: a smattering of moles here and there, a formidable breadth to his shoulders, a firm unyielding waist. He seems content to just nuzzle Tim’s stomach, rubbing Tim’s cock slow and lazy, his hand jammed inside Tim’s underwear to stroke and thumb the head of his cock. 

After scrambling to locate condoms, Phil seats Tim on Harry’s desk and starts fucking him, there on top of a stack of playbills which topple to the floor as soon as Phil puts his back into it. Tim’s ankles are gripped in Phil’s hands, and his toes point upwards with every thrust, his cock bobbing furiously against his belly from the every downward cant of Phil’s hips. It’s every bit like a pornographic dream: Phil grunting and sweating above him, wearing his pants loose enough around his hips just so he could take out his cock, and Tim, Tim naked completely, save for his socks, whining openly for more, teasing his own chest and plucking his little nipples until they’re taut and oversensitive. 

“Fuck!” Phil hisses. “You’re so pretty. Taking my cock up your ass. You like that, huh? Big, fat cock stretching your pink little hole? Wanted you the second I saw you at the — at the bar. God, your mouth, your ass. If you’d let me I’d have fucked you in the bathroom, bent you over the sink, then took you back with me to my hotel so I could do this all night. Fuck, just look at you.”

“Oh dear god,” Tim moans, slapping a hand over his eyes. He’d be embarrassed except it’s good — really good, because Phil knows how to fuck, rough and dirty, not stopping for anything and changing the rhythm of his thrusts from short and choppy to long and deep so that his balls slap against Tim’s arse in quick succession.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” Tim is babbling even though Phil is, already, fucking him with all he’s got, widening his stance so he could bury himself all the way to the hilt, pausing only to seal a kiss to Tim’s mouth, this time with more tongue than teeth. He keeps spewing nonsense between every breath, calling Tim everything from a cock-hungry twink to a beautiful little slut, and for some reason it works, and Tim eats it all up, wanting to be good, wanting to be everything Phil needs him to be.

Phil groans when he comes, delivering one last final thrust that has Tim shouting his name and knocking over Harry’s prized lamp from the desk. It shatters on the floor with a hiss and a spark before the room is suddenly plunged into a state of semi-darkness. Tim blinks. Phil gasps. The only thing anchoring Tim to the present is Phil’s comfortable weight on top of him; Phil still hasn’t pulled his cock out, and his breath is a warm glance that passes Tim’s neck, making him shiver all the way down to his toes. It’s ridiculous, Tim thinks. How can one person make him feel this way when they’ve only just met?

Phil groans again. Then he starts to laugh. Tim dances his fingers up Phil’s spine and feels the tremor under his fingertips. He laughs too even as Phil kisses him, even as he’s carried, still naked, to the living room. Phil sucks Tim off on the sofa and rubs gingerly at Tim’s hole while Tim’s spread like an indolent starfish across the pillows, his thighs spread the widest they can go, his heels planted on the cushion. 

It’s only after they sweep away the mess and right the upturned furniture in Harry’s study that Tim realises he has to go back. He hesitates, and has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from screaming. Of course it can’t end like this, on a high note; he’s naive to have thought he could have everything. 

“What?” Phil raises an inquisitive eyebrow. His mouth is — it’s soft, from kissing Tim, from sucking his cock, from Tim biting it until he came. 

“I have to go,” Tim says. 

“What?” Phil says again.

“I’ll be back,” Tim promises — and he is, with enough sense not to break Harry’s lamp which had been the only remnant his wife had left him after the divorce. Tim hefts it in his hands, its solid weight cold in his fingers. He puts it down on the desk then takes the stairs up to his bedroom where he knows Phil will be waiting for him, examining his things with a cursory eye, poking and prodding at everything. There’s a song warbling on the record player when Tim steps inside his room: Kath Bloom again, just like that first time. The same song too: _Come Here_. Tim remembers the first time he’s heard it. It was from a film his father made him watch, a grainy thing, on VHS, on an old television set in the basement where the pingpong table was kept and where he and his father sometimes snuck away to eat crisps and sweets after dinner.

Tim swallows, and he tells himself it’s more at the memory rather than the sight of Phil smiling openly at him, hands buried in the pockets of his jacket, his hair twisted into knotted strands from when Tim had tugged on it and kissed him on the doorstep earlier in the evening, and a thousand other times if Tim didn’t stop this ridiculous game of going back again and again only to fuck things up beyond salvaging. “Hello, again,” Tim says. 

This time, Phil tugs him forward, not by the tie but by the hip, his lips already parted before Tim even meets him halfway for a kiss. They’ve done this before, in a number of different ways, but it still takes Tim aback how unique every experience is, from the way Phil angles his head or cups his face, or breathes slightly into his mouth before grinning softly.

Tim straddles Phil’s lap, and Phil pushes Tim’s shirt up to his armpits, trapping his arms to lick his nipples and suck on them one after the other; he kisses Tim all the way from chest to neck, breathing in his scent which he whispers is sweet, and warm, his voice muffled against the soft skin of Tim’s stomach, his hair a dark avalanche covering his face but the sharp jut of his nose. 

They shuffle out of their clothes, leaving a trail on the floor. 

Tim rides Phil, slow, steady, speared open on his dick until he felt himself unable breathe, Phil rocking into him shallowly and seemingly content to watch him from below, one arm pillowed behind his head while his free hand is splayed across Tim’s hip. His thumb rubs distracted circles up Tim’s side. Tim bends down to kiss him when a sharp thrust sends him into a frenzy, seeing stars behind his eyelids.

Tim’s had him before, though of course Phil doesn’t know that. Phil doesn’t know — Tim wishes he _knew_ , how they’d arrived at this very moment, and the lengths Tim had gone through to ensure that this would happen. How just looking at him made Tim’s breath seize because he’d never felt this strange wave of _rightness_ before Phil walked through the door. Phil would probably think he was crazy. Tim feels a little crazy himself, fucking himself on Phil’s cock like his life depended on it, his face ruddy from the exertion. He knows he’s ugly when he comes, that his chest turns a horrible splotchy red right before orgasm, that he squeals like a pig. But Phil saves him from the embarrassment by surging up to kiss him, open-mouthed, and then he’s coming, hard, with Phil following suit after Tim gives a few bounces over his dick and clenches around him. 

The ceiling is suddenly very interesting. Tim cranes his neck to peer at Phil whose eyes are closed as he struggles to regain his breathing. He’s beautiful, Tim thinks. More than anyone has any right to be. Then Tim stares at himself and touches the port-wine stain under his rib the size of a thumb and wonders what Phil thinks of him. Tim could always ask but — he breaks into a yawn just as Phil glances at him.

“I have an early flight to catch,” Phil confesses, leaning his weight on his elbow. His eyebrows are furrowed, like it pains him to even talk about it. “Tomorrow. I’m probably gonna miss it. Fuck, I don’t know. My mom’s gonna hate me. My dad — he’s, he just died. He’d been sick for a while. I was supposed to be on vacation but I guess now I have to attend his funeral.”

“Were you close?” Tim, who’d lost his father a year ago, is almost annoyed by how blasé Phil is being.

Phil shrugs one shoulder. “Nah, not really. But he was cool, you know, before he got sick. He tried getting me into foootball because I was huge even in high school but it just wasn’t for me. He was a good guy though. He worked really hard to put my brothers and sister to college.” He blinks, then laughs wetly, rubbing his neck in a way Tim has seen him do before when he was feeling coy or embarrassed.

They fuck again after, not talking, or doing anything else to distract them from the task at hand, Tim anchoring his legs over Phil’s hips while Phil pummeled him, one arm braced on the mattress for traction. Phil falls asleep with his face shoved into a pillow and Tim tries not to fall asleep right away, wanting to stay awake long enough to remember this heady feeling that seems to pervade his chest. He fails, of course, though he puts a valiant effort at least, closing his eyes when the light outside changes to a mixture of streetlamp and dawn.

Tim wakes when he hears Phil stumbling in the dark, moving in the direction of the bathroom through trial and error, hissing when he stubs his toe. Light spills in from the hallway, cutting through the darkness and slicing a line across the mauve carpet. And then Phil is shambling back in no time at all andshimmying under the covers, a now-familiar weight on the bed. He smells like sweat and sex, laced with the mineral scent of sleep. 

“I thought you were leaving,” Tim says, too exhausted to care if he sounds desperate or needy. 

Phil yawns, tucking Tim’s head under his chin, patting his soft stomach under the mismatched quilts, and just like that the hum in Tim’s chest subsides like a quieted child.

“I wasn’t leaving,” Phil promises. “Go back to sleep.”

Against his wishes, Tim does, and he sinks into it like a stone. When he wakes again, sunlight is hollering through the curtains he left open during the night, casting the room in a hazy glow like gauze. It’s 7:25 in the morning but Harry doesn’t seem to be home if the silence downstairs seems to be any indication. Tim washes his face, takes a piss, brushes his teeth in the bathroom and leans against the open doorway resolutely not watching Phil sleep. 

He has to count to ten move away from the bed before he does something he’ll regret like wake him up with a fucking blowjob. He makes coffee downstairs, fastening a robe over his pyjamas, listening to the static hiss of the radio perched on the shelf, turned on to Harry’s favourite station. 

It doesn’t take long before Phil is joining him in the kitchen, wearing the clothes he wore the night before, rumpled, the shirt turned inside out to reveal the tags. It seems like something within the realm of his personality, and the way he holds himself so aloof to everything is an echo of that cockiness. Phil’s smiling but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He has his jacket clutched in his hand; he looks like he’s ready to go. The worst part of it all is that Tim will let him. He’s not brave; he’s not anything, he’ll let Phil walk away unscathed, maybe even go back in time so none of this would have ever even happened.

It dawns on him now how ridiculous he’d been. And all for what? A guy smiled at him across the pub and suddenly he was the love of Tim’s life? He would never see Phil again after today. _Stupid_ , Tim thinks, angry at himself. _Stupid, stupid._ What was he expecting? That Phil would profess his undying love? That he would really miss his flight for him and they would — they had something, last night, whatever it was, but it’s nothing now, forgotten in the face of reality. Tim has always been accused of being a desperate romantic, and this has always been true, as a child and as an adult. He hated his father more than anything for perpetuating this notion of — of _romance_ , of _love_ , how it was always the end goal and how nothing, no obstacle could be unmoved by it. But people loved other things all the time: objects, themselves. And it meant nothing, nothing at all. 

“Morning,” Phil says, crossing his arms, watching Tim carefully. 

Tim says nothing, pouring himself a cup of coffee, doing his level best to keep his movements calm and steady. 

He isn’t expecting Phil to cross the room to kiss him, tipping his face up, two fingers under Tim’s chin. He isn’t expecting him to lean him against the wall and press their foreheads together so his hair scratches at Tim’s cheeks and his breath steams their mouths when he laughs.

“I should leave,” Phil says. He takes a small step back, but keeps his hand firmly planted on Tim’s hip, keeps talking. “This isn’t — this isn’t goodbye though. It’s not a period — just, you know, a comma. And I know how it sounds like something people say that doesn’t mean anything, but I’m not an asshole, I’m not a liar. I won’t lie about any of this, not to you.” 

Tim says nothing. Because what’s there to say to that? 

“I have no idea what’s going on or what’s happening to me,” Phil continues. “But I’m looking at you right now and I really want to miss that flight. But I can’t. I know I can’t. But you make me want to stay, so very badly, Tim.” 

He coughs out some laughter, shaking his head. Then he picks up his leather jacket and walks out of the room. 

Phil only gets as far as the foyer before he’s turning round to face Tim again. “Have you ever met somebody that just — _gets you?_ ” He starts to say. “That’s you. For me. It sounds trite, god. And really dumb. Okay, I’ll shut up now. I’ll go away if you want me to.” He opens the front door, taking the steps two at a time, and is on the sidewalk faster than Tim can find the words to make him stay. 

Tim rushes out the door, barefoot, not thinking at all. It’s cold enough that his toes sting on the tile, and his breath produces a white cloud every time he speaks. “I don’t want you to leave,” Tim calls out after him. Then he recants: “I _mean_.” Phil glances at him over his shoulder, and it occurs to Tim that this is the second time he’ll be watching him walk away. The first time he’d driven Phil out by being stupid, and now history is fast repeating itself. 

“Do you want to stay for breakfast at least?” Tim says. 

Phil blinks at him, cocking his head to the side. Tim waits, and then Phil is climbing up the stoop so he’s standing on level with Tim. Tim is suddenly warm again with Phil taking the brunt of the cold, blocking most of the breeze. He peers into Tim’s face before letting out a relieved little laugh. 

“Yeah, sure,” he says, like it’s the most absurd thing he’s ever heard. “Breakfast, I can do breakfast.” 

Later, Tim lets him go after feeding him jam and toast and letting him have the leftover treacle pudding in the fridge. 

Phil fucks him one last time, bent over the sink, hitching the robe up Tim’s waist, his face pressed between Tim’s trembling shoulder blades as he mouthed wetly at the fabric. But it isn’t the last time, no, because Phil comes round again a few months later, needing a place to stay, on holiday again after sorting his family affair. 

They find a tiny little flat in North London, where the ceiling doesn’t leak and they have enough in the way of natural lighting, one bedroom, one bath, a tiny kitchenette where the coffeemaker Phil steals from Harry sits in a place of honor among the tumult of junk food. 

They fight about the bills, whose turn it is to take out the garbage, about Phil squandering his inheritance money spending it on this and that; they fuck that first night in the flat after painting the walls a linen white, wrinkling the plastic tarp thrown all over the floor, flecks of paint in their hair, then again after they unearth everything from their boxes, on a denuded mattress on the floor that they keep there until their actual bed arrives from the shop.

Three years later and Phil takes Tim to a play in the West End whereby afterwards he asks him to marry him, apropos of nothing, standing under the awning of a restaurant as they wait out the rain. And Tim says yes, of course, and swats at him, and brings him round to meet his mum and his sister in their old house by the seaside where he and Phil traipse the shoreline on bare feet, after brunch, clutching their shoes in a separate hand as the sun dips behind the hills. 

Even later, Tim shows Phil his favourite hiding place, the basement where his father listened to old records and taught him how to play table tennis. They sit on the dingy sofa, going through his vinyl collection, sorting out his ragged books, and they end up fucking there too, amid the dust and boxes, falling asleep on a bed of old quilts. Tim wakes first and takes stock of his environment, the scent of worn pages, the wet-leaf smell of the rain falling softly outside, Phil’s citrusy shampoo threading his hair, his chest moving under Tim’s cheek.

Tim thinks then, absently, of his father, about what he would say to him from time to time while they were down here in the basement, reading Thomas Hardy or Walt Whitman, or playing chess while taking sips of whiskey his father had squirreled away when Tim’s mum wasn’t looking. 

Simple joys, he said, are the great ones, the ones that move you the most. Because it’s not about having everything figured out or living the dream, or the money or the fast car. It’s about the little things you don't even realise: a ring on your finger on a rainy day, a dog waiting for you at home, someone’s hand underneath your shirt while you slept on a tiny sofa older than either of you, your breath moving in rhythm to his, the things that don’t need explaining. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
